A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to accessories for musical instruments. More particularly, the invention relates to a versatile acoustic pickup for converting musical sounds to electronic signals, which is quickly attachable to and removable from a wide variety of musical instruments, and has a sound directivity that is easily adjustable over a wide range of orientations relative to an instrument to which it is attached.
B. Description of Background Art
There are a wide variety of musical instruments which may be optionally equipped with a transducer or “pickup” to convert musical sounds produced by the instrument to electrical signals. Typically, the electrical signals output from a pickup are input to an amplifier, and amplified to a level sufficient to drive a loudspeaker. The signals may also be input to an analog or digital recording device.
Musical instruments which may utilize sound pickups include drums and other percussion instruments, upright and double basses, autoharps, violins, cellos, acoustic guitars, 12-string guitars, dulcimers, tenor banjos, resonator guitars, gypsy jazz guitars, mandolins, accordions, and keyboards, as well as other instruments.
One type of musical instrument pickup which has been in extensive use for many years is a magnetic pickup used on guitars, which produces electrical signals in response to motions of a vibrating guitar string in the vicinity of a magnetic field produced by the pickup. Such pickups are used primarily with guitars and other stringed instruments, must be positioned precisely in close proximity to strings, and usually require permanent or semi-permanent attachment to a musical instrument.
Another type of pickup in common use with musical instruments includes a vibration-sensitive device such as a piezoelectric sensor which is fastened to the soundboard of a stringed instrument, or to the shell or other part of a percussion instrument such as a drum, and produces electrical output signals proportional to the amplitude and frequency of vibrations of the soundboard, drumhead, or drum body caused by sounds produced by the instrument. Vibration sensitive pickups of the type described above require careful positioning, and oftentimes permanent or semi-permanent attachment to a musical instrument.
A third type of pickup used with musical instruments, and which may be referred to generally as an acoustic pickup, consists essentially of a microphone which is attachable to various parts of a musical instrument such as a stringed instrument, drum, or other percussion instrument.
Acoustic pickups are in relatively widespread use, but there are problems with the present generation of such devices. The problems include large size, cumbersomeness, difficulty of mounting the pickup to a musical instrument, and undesirable feedback of vibrations of the instrument to the device, which by design preferably would respond primarily to acoustic signals transmitted through the air rather than vibrations transmitted through the body of an instrument.
Another problem with existing acoustic pickups for musical instruments is the difficulty with which the sound directivity of the pickup may be adjusted, and a requirement that typical current generation pickups must be permanently or semi-permanently attached to a musical instrument. The adjustable directivity pickup for musical instruments according to the present invention was developed by the present inventor to address problems of the type described above encountered with present generation pickups.